Sweet Grief
Senitila McKinley painting
Grief is beautiful, we agreed, then laughed
Because when grief grips the neck, grabs
the throat, shakes body and sours
the mind
we need humor.
You are one Christmas, two seasons,
20 weeks and 159 days
away.
The sky holds a reluctant sun.
Brightness cowers, head down, drawing
darkness as proof of its
despair.
Without you, meaning dims and this absence
pulls me down and under, away.
I can’t recall the sound of your voice.
Still, I bring flowers and meet the sky,
ask it to
hold me, too.
- Drew Myron
From Sweet Grief, a collaboration featuring paintings by Senitila McKinley, paired with poems by Drew Myron.
Sweet Grief: Paintings and Poems on Love & Loss is showing April 20 to May 20, 2012 at the Windermere Gallery in Seal Rock, Oregon.
Special edition exhibition book - $10
Drew
Reader Comments (2)
I just caught a snippet of one of your poems here: http://www.epicenter.org/article/collaboration-with-poet-helps-deacon-through-grief/ and I was hooked. It is so rare and beautiful to find someone that looks at death, not through morose grief-laden eyes but through color, gratitude and positivity. This weekend my father lost his mother, my sister lost her mother and one of my long-time employees lost his mother so it clearly has been a time for some reflection and thought on the subject, hence me stumbling upon an article about your work and a copy of this book being shipped up into the great white north :) It's a very difficult and often-times dangerous thing to do to try to epouse a view that death is a gift, the final gift one offers those closest to them, to those who are mired deep in a fog of grief but hopefully with your words and poems seeds can be planted that now is the time for gratitude and joy, not bitterness and anger.
Ryan,
What a lovely note. Thank you for your kind and tender words.
A copy of Sweet Grief is on its way to you. I'm so glad you found the book, and hope it brings illumination.
Thank you.